Monthly Archives: March 2012

Summer started here a few weeks ago. There was a small relapse last week but summer is back with a vengeance today. I went out to the bush to hike around a bit and found a garter snake, a wood-tick … Continue reading →

According to this query on my Wikimedia database, that could be so: “agents=> select sum(count) as c from data where string ilike ‘%x11%’ and not string ilike ‘%bot%’ and not string ilike ‘%crawl%’ and not string ilike ‘%spider%’ and string … Continue reading →

C-19 is on the order paper for the Senate for Monday, 2012-04-2. The Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee rapidly reviewed the bill and it now goes to the whole Senate for third and final reading, debate, votes. It could be … Continue reading →

2011 was great for tablets, Apple’s tablets. 2012 will be different. Google, realizing Android/Linux tablets have respectable but not great share of the market, is gearing up to actively promote Android/Linux tablets. All the pieces needed for great competition will … Continue reading →

I was reading about IBM’s acceptance and management of Bring Your Own Device policy for IT and reflected that IBM is likely not alone in this movement. Businesses of all sizes and locations may find some variation of BYOD useful. … Continue reading →

When I was young, rms meant “root-mean-square” a form of averaging in alternating current meansurments. Now it means Richard Stallman, icon of FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) or simply, Free Software. He defined the term and began/codified a movement to … Continue reading →

Besides changes like eliminating the one cent coin (which costs 1.5 cents to manufacture…) there is actually some modernization of IT in the budget: reduction of travel by means of video-conferencing, reduction of paper documents by means of electronic documents, … Continue reading →

For decades, the USA was the trend-setter in all things IT. In the last few years that has changed dramatically: USA now receives only 20% of PCs shipped by OEMs, mostly replacing old machines. USA received only 21.3% of 491million … Continue reading →

There are some really good things in the budget: getting rid of 19K employees, improve schools and infrastructure on Indian reserves, various tax changes, innovation in science/technology by using grants and matching funds, budgetary surplus within a few years, and … Continue reading →

Today is the day the gloves will come off. This morning the agenda consists of statements and Q&A from two witnesses but this afternoon, clause by clause examination of the bill will happen. This is the last faint hope of … Continue reading →

I was thinking that Oracle’s claims in Oracle v Google were bottoming out at a few tens of $millions. It turns out to be worse than that. In the pre-trial meeting, Google made a reasonable offer that amounts to just … Continue reading →

Mayor Ude of Munich, Germany, has stated some facts about the effects of the migration from that other OS to GNU/Linux: Savings of 4 million Euros on hardware and software upgrades, thanks to free ($0) licences for GNU/Linux and lower … Continue reading →

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.